Welcome to Information Wasteland, a series about the many ways misinformation is worming its way into our algorithms and minds, wreaking havoc on our culture. In this reported op-ed, author and culture critic Zeba Blay unpacks the proliferation of Black AI influencers and what their existence says about the dehumanization of Black people and exploitation of Black culture.
You’re doomscrolling. On TikTok, or Instagram, or YouTube, or some other equally distracting online platform. In between harrowing news stories pointing to the nation’s decline, clips from balloon-popping dating shows, and ads for the latest viral lipstain, you see a face. The face may give you pause. This is because what you are looking at is only the concept of a face: a Black woman, perhaps in her mid-20s, with glowing brown skin, immaculate brows, slicked down baby hairs, and sharp acrylic nails on her fingers.
“Get ready with me,” she says, “I need to go shopping. I have to find some clothes for my Miami trip. I’m thinking about wearing this little tan Skims…” She heads to the mall. She goes to Zara. “I found four outfits, I still need two more. But the four I found are definitely tea.” She is not a real person.
You scroll some more. Another face. A Black woman with a snatched blonde ponytail, long lashes. Someone is interviewing her on the street, asking whether she’d rather cheat on her man or cheat on her homegirls (a nonsense question). “Cheat on my man, easy. My girls’ been here through breakups, bail outs, and bad wigs. He’s just a vibe, they’re the whole bloodline.” Scroll. Another face. Dark-skinned model-looking girl on some nondescript podcast set, speaking into a microphone. “Every white man I’ve dated paid the full bill. No questions. No debates.” Scroll. Another face. What appears to be a Black woman sat courtside at a basketball game, smugly raising a cocktail. Ace Hood’s “Bugatti” plays over the image, captioned: “I’m not real…but unlike you I don’t wait ‘til Friday to get paid.”
And here we are, at the end of everything: the uncanny valley of Black generative AI influencers. A vast wilderness of hyperrealistic avatars doing mukbangs, wig installs, and calling us broke. Like all digital blackface, they implicitly play into racialized stereotypes of Blackness, particularly Black femininity. Digital blackface has evolved, or rather adapted, to the demands of late-as-hell stage capitalism. What once lived in the pixels of reaction GIFs and memes has now transformed into something slicker, though no less insidious — the continuation of a long, wearying American tradition of stealing Black expression and exploiting it for profit.
